This workshop that I facilitate in Mexico is aimed at reconnecting with the thread of our personal history, focusing primarily on the nature of how we bond with our parents.

During childhood, and at certain points in our lives, our parents have communicated rejection, abandonment, demand, and a lack of support of our independence. Eager to live up to their expectations, we develop emotional and behavioural patterns, and find ways to adapt, which work for us at the time, but have long-lasting effects down the line: difficulty to engage in interpersonal relationships, depression, disconnect from our essence, etc.

This workshop teaches us to identify the toxicity of these acquired behaviours, gently embracing the pain that comes with them, accepting the lack of affection generated towards us and towards those around us. We then embark on a journey to return “home,” to our essence, to the creativity that spawns the possible, the loving, the vital.
By exploring the sphere of the personal, afflicted by the pain and violence that mark our childhood reality, we discover the landscape of the “human,” which accommodates the ability of the mature adult to honour the internal representation of the parents and take an important step towards genuine forgiveness.

Our capacity to be spontaneous, to be creative and to be happy depends, to a great extent, on the level of integration and coherence obtained throughout our lives.

Methodology for “Árbol que canta”:

• • Residential week-long workshop, with a group of 22 participants (maximum)
• • Includes
  -Contributions from systemic family therapy applied to the original family
  – Expressive and cathartic exercises based on the body psychotherapy approach
  – Rituals based on the Mexican shamanic tradition

The process is available in more than fourteen countries, and I am part of a team of therapists who facilitate the Hoffman Process in France in French.

The Hoffman Process is an intense and deep seminar that focuses on parental figures and organically reveals pain and childhood rage harboured towards parents. Working towards reconciliation with our parents and our personal circumstances, the process visits the landscapes of childhood and teaches us to face the present and the future after releasing the emotional burden of the past.

In a sense, the Process could be defined as an initiation ritual marking the passage from child to adult, from lack of affection to love, from receiving to giving.

It is a process that involves mourning a childhood illusion: parents will change and will give us what we have expected from them for so long.

It is lovingly taking a step away from parents, experiencing a divorce without guilt, and allowing ourselves to responsibly take the reins of our own lives.

The Hoffman Methodology

The methodology is both therapeutic and educational, and is simple and accessible. It is designed to reconnect with the ability to love and develop healthy relationships with the world we live in.
The group setting offers a strong supportive environment and is combined with individualized attention that allows each participant to embark on strictly confidential deep biographical work.
The workshop is facilitated during an intensive 8-day retreat. The residential format in a peaceful location favours concentration and allows participants to absorb cognitive, emotional and behavioural learning.

The five stages of the Hoffman Process:

1) Preparation and awareness
One month before the seminar, participants receive a guide inviting them to perform a biographical self-assessment at home.
Pre-course work identifies and defines the attitudes that affect our quality of life in our social relationships, family, work, health, etc.
During the preparation stage, an individual phone consultation will be arranged to clarify the nature of current conflicts.
During the seminar, we return to this work material to raise awareness regarding the connection between current problems and acquired behaviours that were conditioned in childhood.

2) Expressing conflictive emotions
The goal is to explore, express, and elaborate on painful, embarrassing, aggressive and guilty emotions linked to our childhood.

3) Compassionate acceptance
By analysing our life and the lives of our parents with an open heart, we gain insight into the negative patterns that have been passed from generation to generation.
It is an essential step towards forgiveness.

4) Integration
After releasing the burden of the weight of their past, participants learn to “align” thoughts, emotions and actions as a mature adult.
Participants develop new abilities on an existential level and when building relationships.

5) Consolidation
The Process does not end after the intensive weeklong retreat!
The following month, participants are invited to take part in a day of group work and personal over-the-phone consultation to assist them as they return home and face the challenges involved.

The uniqueness of the Hoffman methodology opens the door to a long-lasting commitment, and to a more conscious, creative and responsible life.